Quotes from book
Harmonium

Harmonium
Wallace Stevens

Harmonium is a book of poetry by American poet Wallace Stevens. His first book at the age of forty-four, it was published in 1923 by Knopf in an edition of 1500 copies. This collection comprises 85 poems, ranging in length from just a few lines to several hundred . Harmonium was reissued in 1931 with three poems omitted and fourteen new poems added.Most of Harmonium's poems were published between 1914 and 1923 in various magazines, so most are now in the public domain in America and similar jurisdictions, as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act affects only works first published after 1922.

Wallace Stevens photo

“This is old song
That will not declare itself…”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"Metaphors of a Magnifico"
Harmonium (1923)

Wallace Stevens photo

“Twenty men crossing a bridge,
Into a village,
Are twenty men crossing twenty bridges,
Into twenty villages,
Or one man
Crossing a single bridge into a village.”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"Metaphors of a Magnifico"
Harmonium (1923)

Wallace Stevens photo

“One thing remaining, infallible, would be
Enough.”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"The Well Dressed Man With a Beard"
Harmonium (1923)

Wallace Stevens photo

“I heard them cry — the peacocks.
Was it a cry against the twilight
Or against the leaves themselves”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"Domination of Black"
Harmonium (1923)
Context: I heard them cry — the peacocks.
Was it a cry against the twilight
Or against the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
Turning as the flames
Turned in the fire,
Turning as the tails of the peacocks
Turned in the loud fire,
Loud as the hemlocks
Full of the cry of the peacocks?
Or was it a cry against the hemlocks?

Wallace Stevens photo

“One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"The Snow Man"
Harmonium (1923)
Context: p>One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitterOf the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare placeFor the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.</p

Wallace Stevens photo

“My candle burned alone in an immense valley.
Beams of the huge night converged upon it,
Until the wind blew.”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"Valley Candle"
Harmonium (1923)
Context: My candle burned alone in an immense valley.
Beams of the huge night converged upon it,
Until the wind blew.
Then beams of the huge night
Converged upon its image,
Until the wind blew.

Wallace Stevens photo

“After the final no there comes a yes
And on that yes the future world depends.”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"The Well Dressed Man with a Beard"
Harmonium (1923)
Context: After the final no there comes a yes
And on that yes the future world depends.
No was the night. Yes is this present sun.

Wallace Stevens photo

“Of what was it I was thinking?
So the meaning escapes.”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"Metaphors of a Magnifico"
Harmonium (1923)
Context: The boots of the men clump
On the boards of the bridge.
The first white wall of the village
Rises through fruit-trees.
Of what was it I was thinking?
So the meaning escapes.

Wallace Stevens photo

“Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"Sunday Morning"
Harmonium (1923)
Context: We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or an old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

Wallace Stevens photo

“I felt afraid.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"Domination of Black"
Harmonium (1923)
Context: I saw how the night came,
Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks.
I felt afraid.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

Wallace Stevens photo

“Out of a thing believed, a thing affirmed:
The form on the pillow humming while one sleeps,
The aureole above the humming house...
It can never be satisfied, the mind, never.”

Wallace Stevens book Harmonium

"The Well Dressed Man With a Beard"
Harmonium (1923)